Players, Please Board the Train

Xu Huo stood up and walked step by step toward the side door.

The area both inside and outside the house was shrouded in darkness, yet this side door stood out with startling clarity, every detail visible even in the night.

At that moment, his brain stopped thinking, leaving only a single, pure impulse—to go inside and take a look.

An indescribably strange sensation consumed him. Right then, Xu Huo completely forgot the word ”danger.” Without any purpose, he simply wanted to ”go in and see.”

Just as he reached for the doorknob and was about to push it open, something suddenly jabbed him in the back. In an instant, he snapped out of that hypnotic state, forcefully slammed the door shut, and turned around to see the grandfather and granddaughter silently standing right behind him.

The two people with bloodshot eyes lunged at him simultaneously. Xu Huo pressed one hand down on the little girl’s head and used his umbrella to push the old man back, casually sprinkling some sleeping potion in the process.

The pair crumpled to the ground one after the other. Xu Huo felt his focus starting to slip again, his gaze involuntarily drifting back to the door behind him. But after grabbing the doorknob, instead of falling under that possessed urge to go inside, he put on the ”Stick Like Glue” and smeared the mucus secreted by the clothing all over the lock and the door crack.

A bizarre compulsion drove him to break in, but Xu Huo wasn’t about to fall for that now. He stuck a ”Do Not Disturb” sign on the door to counteract the mental influence, then knocked on the door panel and said, ”Come out if you’ve got the guts.”

”But knowing you, you probably can’t even open a wooden cabinet door... No hands, no feet—your ’god’ act isn’t all that impressive either.”

A rapid clattering sound came from behind the door. The unconscious grandfather and granddaughter silently got back up and charged at the side door again, but Xu Huo intercepted them first, tied them up with a rope, tossed them into a corner, and let out a pitying sigh toward the door. ”How pathetic.”This seemed to enrage the ”god” inside the room. Crimson light seeped through the cracks in the door and windows. In an instant, the previously deathly silent courtyard burst into activity. Within seconds, the courtyard gate was breached, and nearby residents flooded in through the main entrance like driven animals, madly charging at the room housing the religious statue.

Xu Huo brought the grandfather and granddaughter outside but didn’t rush to leave. Instead, he crouched on the courtyard wall, observing the light inside the room.

After a moment, he concluded that the red light could influence ordinary people’s minds but struggled to affect players. During this time, someone broke the door and windows, letting out more light, yet it still couldn’t sway his sanity.

After some thought, he raised his voice. ”Is that all you’ve got?”

The crowd’s assault on the house came to an abrupt halt. Then, in perfect unison, they twisted their heads around, bloodshot eyes staring at him from every angle.

Xu Huo rubbed his chin. Good lord, they nearly turned a full hundred and eighty degrees.

He clapped his hands symbolically. ”Out of a hundred, I’ll give you a sixty this time.”

His repeated dismissive attitude must have enraged the statue inside the room. Starting from this small courtyard, red lights flickered on one after another in the surrounding yards. The sound of doors opening and closing rose and fell in succession. Residents from all over the county flooded in from every direction, chasing and blocking him like mindless zombies.

Xu Huo leaped up and down along the courtyard walls, moving at a moderate pace, leading the residents toward the hotel. As the crowd grew larger, he spotted a few players mixed in among them, their expressions blank and identical to those of the locals.

”What’s going on?” a black-shirted player asked, jumping out from a courtyard and following behind Xu Huo.

”Haven’t you figured it out? The god’s gone berserk,” Xu Huo said as he ran. ”Probably just throwing a helpless tantrum.”

The black-shirted player looked up and studied his expression seriously. Seeing no hint of a joke, he said, ”Seems like this god isn’t all that powerful.”

Cutting through the streets, more and more players joined Xu Huo and the black-shirted player’s group, following them out of the county.

”Where are you taking them?” Fang Penghui immediately saw through Xu Huo’s plan. ”To the water pool? What’s over there anyway?”

”We’ll only know once we see it,” Xu Huo said, unable to confirm. The county had seemed normal during the day, with no visible issues. Since this wasn’t the dungeon’s core location, time could also be a variable. So they had to go there at night.

The previous night, he and Yi Pei had been cornered in the forest. Even if they rallied all the players, they might not have had the advantage. But if the entire county’s population charged in together, things could be different.

”There are still a few players in the crowd,” Tian Kunwen said as he caught up.

”Forget about them. They’re probably beyond saving,” Fu Danhong said. ”Be careful not to catch a glimpse of that statue when it’s tipped out!”

With some players already affected, the rest grew especially cautious, pulling up their clothes to shield their peripherals and doing their best to avoid looking at the source of the red light.

But just as the players, leading the county residents in a massive wave, charged into the forest, the red light within the city suddenly vanished entirely. The running crowd gradually slowed to a halt, their glassy eyes slowly regaining focus. Someone scratched their head and asked, ”How did I end up here?”

The person beside them scratched their head too. ”Maybe I was sleepwalking. It’s not even dawn yet.”

”Damn, it’s raining! I’m soaking wet!”

”Move it, you in the back! What are you standing around for? The sooner we get back, the sooner we sleep!”

”Which bastard stepped on my foot...”

”Stop shoving! You rushing to reincarnate or what?”

...

Half a minute ago, these people had been like puppets on strings, completely devoid of consciousness. Now, they had returned to their normal, rowdy, cursing state. But noisy as they were, not a single person questioned the situation. On the contrary, everyone seemed unusually energetic, wearing unsettling smiles as they laughed, chatted, and dispersed in all directions.

Those who followed them back into the city could even hear complaints about broken doors and windows, along with talk of fixing them tomorrow.

The players stood by the hotel, exchanging bewildered glances.

The only silver lining was that the players who had spaced out had also come back.

”What exactly happened?” Fang Penghui immediately pressed for details.

The few of them were still dazed, with no memory of walking with the crowd. They described what had happened before in a confused, fragmented manner.

Piecing their words together, it went something like this: out of curiosity, they had opened the wooden cabinet housing the god, seen the stone eye inside, and the moment a red light flashed from the eye, they lost consciousness.

”None of them were staying in the room with the statue, yet they were still lured into opening the door,” Fang Penghui said, frowning. ”Players have far stronger willpower than ordinary people, yet they didn’t show a single sign of snapping out of it. This dungeon boss is probably tough to deal with. It must have held back because the timing wasn’t right.”

”The timing isn’t right?” Wei Xian asked, puzzled.

”The longer you stay in the dungeon, the deeper the mental influence becomes,” Xu Huo added. People who felt nothing at first would gradually sense the eerie gaze and, driven by that force, actively open the door. By the fifth or sixth day, if a player’s mental power wasn’t strong enough, just the stare from those eyes could drive them insane.

When a person was easily swayed and had no concept of using abilities or items, players and ordinary people were basically the same.